On Wednesday I returned to my Catalan class feeling unprepared after a month of speaking English in Cornwall.
I was also feeling a bit jaded after leaving my Lamorna home and returning to several problems here as well as facing the house again which now feels empty after the death of my mother not in law. I haven’t felt able to write about that yet but just to say that she was a great support and a good friend to me in my first year here and I feel her loss acutely.
So, after resisting the temptation to stay at home and ‘study’ I cycled through town to the school and rejoined my class which is a mixed group of people from Latin America and Morocco.
Near the end of the session we were discussing sport and suddenly a slightly boring (to me) lesson grew legs and started to run. One moment we were talking about which sports we like and the next we were having a heated question and answer session about Islam, the wearing of the veil and the burka, Palestine, war in Iraq, Libya, Tony Blair …….
It started when one normally quiet Moroccan woman in a headscarf said she can’t attend gym classes or the swimming pool because of her religion. All classes here are mixed gender and she can only go if it is woman-only but that doesn’t exist in Granollers. Everyone started asking questions. Why can’t she chose to do as she likes, why wear the veil, what is written in the Koran…etc etc. A man from Morocco spoke about the European fear of Islam and the situation in Palestine. Someone else asked if she would have to wear a veil if she travelled to Morocco. The conversation was so fast I could hardly keep up let alone contribute anything. Most people speak fluent castellano so when their catalan fails them they fill the gaps with that.
I think that in the UK we are so nervous of saying the ‘wrong’ thing that we don’t ask lots of questions about religious and cultural differences so it was refreshing to hear everyone just being curious. But it also made me slightly anxious. It was like a tap which once turned on could not be stopped.
Mention of the UK and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all eyes seemed to turn to me – suddenly I realised what it is like to be seen as representative of all things questionable in your country.
How close sport is to politics. Perhaps language classes like old fashioned dinner parties should avoid all mention of Politics and Religion and ….Sport. Or perhaps not?
I wonder if there are times in BCN or some of the larger towns that set aside classes when the muslim women can come. Hmmm. I bet not. Not yet anyway.
Catalan…I am so glad to hear of another person learning Catalan who cannot simply fill in with Spanish…it makes me feel so stupid sometimes….at least I’m not alone…
That is in the catalan/spanish thing…not saying you feel stupid, though I imagine we all have our moments….
I wondered that too – about the bigger cities – but I think the immigration is still too recent to have led to changes in the way things are organised. I lived for so long in London that I got used to there being more choices. One thing I really like about my Catalan class is that I meet some different people – but we’re still not really mixing. We smile and say hello in the market though which is nice.K x
I don’t think for one minute that Catalunya, or anywhere in Spain, would run women only classes on the grounds of religion. And in my view, quite rightly so! I think the U.K. has bent over backwards far too much for immigrants, eg in translation facilities etc. When in Rome etc…